It took nearly two years, but residents and business owners in Worcester's Tatnuck Square area will finally have their day in court, so to speak, Monday night.

That is when the city will hold a public hearing on roadway changes and improvements planned in Tatnuck Square.

Normally, such a public hearing is pretty routine. But this hearing, which will be held at 7 p.m. in Room 102 of the Ghosh Science and Technology Building at Worcester State University, will be anything but ordinary.

That's because the city has not only bid the contract for the project, it has already awarded a contract for it as well.

That's right, the city bid and awarded a contract for a project before holding a public hearing on it.

And now that the contract has been awarded, the city is going to hold a public hearing on the project — something people in the Tatnuck Square area have been seeking for months.

Hey, who's on first?

It is all so confusing.

If a contract has already been signed for this project, what is the point of the public hearing?

Is it simply going to be a dog-and-pony show to give the Tatnuck Square folks a forum to vent without any substantive changes made to the project, or will their input actually mean something?

We shall see.

The project involves, in part, reconfiguring the two legs of Mower Street that abut the traffic island in Tatnuck Square.

Both are currently two-way; the plans call for reducing the number of lanes on the leg of Mower Street that runs in front of People's United Bank from two to one, and making it one-way going out of Tatnuck Square.

On the other leg of Mower Street, the plans call for adding a third lane of traffic; to accommodate the reconfiguration, part of the memorial garden with a World War I veterans monument will have to be taken.

The project also involves upgrades to the traffic signals at Chandler and Pleasant streets, and at Chandler and Mill streets to improve the flow of traffic through there.

What has people in Tatnuck Square up in arms over this, though, is that the city signed a contract for the project before giving the public to an opportunity to provide input on the plans.

"To put this project out to bid and then award a contract without holding a public hearing on it is just plain wrong," said Paul Gunnerson, president of the Tatnuck Neighborhood Association, which strongly opposes the plans. "We've been asking for a public hearing since 2012 and now we are finally getting one, after the city has signed a contract for the project."

District 5 Councilor Gary Rosen is equally perplexed by it all.

"The city signed a contract knowing that people who wanted to speak out about it weren't allowed to," he said. "I don't get it."

There has been talk for many years about making roadways changes in Tatnuck Square to ease the traffic bottlenecks that frequently develop there during the morning and evening commutes.

Two years ago, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation finally moved forward on the project and developed plans to change the traffic configuration in Tatnuck Square.

The state never held public hearings on the plans; instead it held one "briefing" at Worcester Regional Airport during a meeting of the West Side Business Network in October 2012.

Another "briefing" was held by the state at Tatnuck Magnet School in November 2012, but notice was not sent out to any of the interested parties.

At that meeting, however, it became apparent that people had objections to the plan. After that, the state put the project on hold for one year because of the issues raised by the neighborhood.

All of which has Mr. Rosen asking: "If the state put this project off for a year, why did the city then sign a contract?"

Eventually, MassDOT washed its hands of the project and turned it over to the city. It agreed to provide $1.2 million to fund the project, but it wanted no part in overseeing it. Instead, that became the city's responsibility.

Then, sometime during 2013, much to the surprise of a lot of folks in Tatnuck Square, the city put the project out to bid and then awarded a contract without first holding a public hearing.

All of which brings us to the present.

Frustrated that the city would not hold a public hearing on the Tatnuck Square traffic plan, the Tatnuck Neighborhood Association recently held its own community meeting on the project and it attracted more than 65 people, including several city officials.

Mayor Joseph M. Petty then followed that up by asking the city administration to host a public hearing on roadway changes in the Tatnuck Square area.

He said he would like to see one more public hearing held on the matter, this time hosted by the city administration, to discuss the plan and its associated issues so residents and business owners in the Tatnuck Square area will have a clear understanding of what is going on.

He said two Tatnuck Square businesses in particular — the People's United Bank and Gerardi's Service Center and Auto Repair — could be most impacted by the traffic pattern changes.

The mayor said those people who have been maintaining the memorial garden in Tatnuck Square for years also feel they have been unfairly treated in the process because they were never given an opportunity to provide their input.

"It's important that we have buy-in and a consensus on this if we can to a point on this," Mr. Petty said. "Let's have the city host a public hearing so people can have an opportunity to understand the changes and why we are making them. This meeting should be hosted by the city of Worcester."

Which brings us to Monday night's public hearing. The Tatnuck Neighborhood Association has made it abundantly clear it opposes any plans in which land will be taken from the memorial garden in Tatnuck Square.

"Sometimes people don't realize what they have till they lose it," Mr. Gunnerson said. "And sometimes people don't appreciate what they have till they know what it once was. Not many people even remember what the Whitaker Square Memorial looked like before I decided to bring the dignity and respect it deserved back to it in 1991.

"It is now being threatened by an ill-conceived traffic plan drawn up by some person from the MassDOT in a cubicle in Boston." he added. "And by a city that certainly doesn't appreciate what we have now and what it once was, and are now willing to ruin it forever."

Yes, it should be an interesting public hearing Monday night.

Contact Nick Kotsopoulos at nicholas.kotsopoulos@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @NCKotsopoulos

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